Marching Camp

As night approachs, every Ikarian and later Blatian army on campaign needs to build a marching camp to spend the night protected into enemy territory.

Building the fort

The responsability of building the fort resides in the "Prefect of the Camp". Once an Ikarian/Blatian legion decides to camp, explorers are sent to the surrounding areas to look for the best, and more defensive position to built a camp. Once such location is discovered the army begins building the camp.
Firstly, the soldiers dig the ditch, and with the earth they remove during the excavation they form the ramp on which the palisade rests. Each soldier carries a pair of stakes to build the palisade, so the army does not have to search or collect material from the surrounding area.
The internal layout of the camp is then established, how the officers' and the rest of the troops' tents are distributed, and the tents are set up. Each one can accommodate 8 soldiers, the officers' tents are usually larger and more spacious.
After all this process, guard shifts are established along the palisades and at the four gates of the camp to the north, south, east and west respectively, just as something very important is established when an army camps in hostile territory, passwords, these are spread throughout the camp and anyone who, for some reason, leaves and re-enters must tell this password to the guards. Otherwise, that person can be shot or arrested as a suspected enemy spy.

Dismantling the camp

After night gives way to a new day, at sunrise the trumpets sound, it's time for the army to resume the march!!. The stakes are collected and distributed among the soldiers, the tents are collected and placed on the mules or other pack animals, and the ditches are filled again with earth from the embankment.
Nothing is left that could be reused by the enemy to fortify themselves in that area.

Layout

Ikarian and Blatian marching camps have a rectangular shape (old marching camps from the first centuries of the Ikarian Empire didn't have an standard shape). Two streets cross the camp, one in a north-south direction and the other from east to west and at the end of these roads you find the main gates of the camp. At the intersection of these two roads the general's tent is usually located, and behind it the Camp Prefect's tent, and to the north of these tents is the field hospital.

Camps during sieges

During sieges the Ikarian/Blatian armies built their camps exactly the same as marching camps, and sometimes adding extra fortifications, like walls surrounding the besieged settlement that connects all the camps around the city and preventing the city from supplies from the outside.

Type

Fort